First the good before we get to the bad and the ugly (i.e., Mr. Sean Hannity).
American innovation comes to the rescue of people who don’t want their junk viewed by the TSA scanner operators.
Jeff Buske says his invention uses a powdered metal that protects people’s privacy when undergoing medical or security screenings.
Of course, if you do wear a pair, you might get the touchy-feely treatment instead:
It’s unclear whether it would lead to an automatic, more intrusive pat down by federal Transportation Security Administration officials.
Unclear. Oh, I think not. What’s funny about this is the other day I caught Sean Hannity bitching on the radio about these x-ray body scanning machines and their health risks, the intrusive pat downs, why don’t we adopt the Israeli security procedures which are less intrusive, and how evil and incompetent the Obama administration is for allowing these intrusive pat down searches, blah, blah, blah, and I had to laugh.
Those are my objections also, and the objections of many of the people in the liberal blogosphere. Hey, look, that Obama loving, left news organization MSNBC did a story about the TSA overreach and Keith Olbermann did a segment on it (scroll down) with Israeli security expert Isaac Yeffet on November 17, 2010. Gosh, Hannity and Olbermann agree full body scans are a waste of tax dollars. Hell must have frozen over.
Yet, a little bird tells me Sean wouldn’t care so much about these concerns if Bush or McCain were president. In that case, he’d be all over the whiny liberal moonbats for objecting to these scanners and body searches that are so essential to foiling Islamofascist terrorist plots to destroy our freedoms.
I mean, from the man who said torture was compatible with Christianity and that massive federal government’s warrentless wiretapping was no big deal, to see him all upset about body scanners and pat down searches simply because we now have a black Muslim loving Democratic president in office is amusing. Imagine what he would have said if Obama had not increased security measures after the failed underwear bomber plot last Christmas.
Yet now he’s incensed about the overbearing government bureaucracy at TSA:
Funny, but where was Hannity, et alia, when George W. Bush created the TSA? Did they object back in the good old days of Bush and Cheney? Of course not:
The TSA was created as part of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act passed by the U.S. Congress, and signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 19, 2001.
And as for the claim that the Federal government prevents the use of private companies as security screeners guess what? It’s a lie. The TSA still allows airports to employ private contractors! What a shock:
The Screening Partnership Program, or SPP, manages the use of qualified private vendors to perform the screening of passengers and baggage at airports participating in the Program. The Program was designed to meet the requirement for the “opt-out” provision established in the Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001, commonly referred to as ATSA. Since November 19, 2004, airport authorities have been eligible under SPP to submit an application to TSA to use private contract screeners. […]
There are currently 16 airports participating in the Screening Partnership Program: San Francisco International Airport; Kansas City International Airport; Greater Rochester International Airport; Sioux Falls Regional Airport; Jackson Hole Airport; Tupelo Regional Airport; Key West International Airport; Charles M. Schultz-Sonoma County Airport; Roswell Industrial Air Center; and seven airports in Montana: Frank Wiley Field; Sidney Richland Regional; Dawson Community; L.M. Clayton; Wokal Field; Havre City County; and Lewiston Municipal.
So, Hannity lied about the fact that private contractors are not used to screen passengers at US airports? What else did he fail to mention? Oh, just the fact that Michael Chertoff, former head of the Department of Homeland Security under Bush, was the lobbyist largely responsible for the current Rapiscan full body x-ray scanners (the source is this article by the Washington Examiner) that the government now uses:
On Christmas Day 2009, just before the “attempted bombing incident” on board flight 253, there were a total of 40 body scanners in use in 19 airports in the U.S. […]
* After the ‘bombing attempt’ Chertoff made a flurry of media appearances suggesting that the “attempted bombing incident” could have been avoided if all airports were using full body scanners.
* The Washington Post printed an article on January 1, 2010, calling Chertoff out for using his government credentials to promote a product that benefits his clients. It was revealed that Rapiscan Systems, the manufacturer of the naked body scanner Chertoff was recommending, was a client of Chertoff’s security consulting agency.
* Rapiscan has since received over $250 million in scanner orders.
Considering Hannity is all obsessed by the horrors of full body scanners and intrusive pat downs more than a year since they were first introduced at American airports, and that he is a bought and well compensated shill for Fox News, I am tempted to call his sudden opposition to body scanners “faux outrage.” Aren’t you?
Opportunistic bullshit. Situational ethics.
for once, I disagree. There’s no way I want a stranger patting me down at the airport. I am not a criminal, and this is guilty until proven innocent, a wholly unAmerican concept.
I talked to a pilot last week – he said the TSA has not caught ANY terrorists. It’s all been passengers or airline crew.
If we REALLY want to be safe from terrorism, we need to deal with the root cause – which is our actions in the Middle East in support of terrorist regimes and our own actions killing innocents with drones and other weapons.
Until we fix THAT, all the ‘safety’ measures in the world will not be enough. They’ll just fly in unarmed, go to the local black market, and whip up a concoction there.
If we see this as a liberal vs. conservative issue we’re going to be part of the problem. This is about not giving up our rights. Imagine if Bush was president – the left would be up in arms over this. This is not a political issue. This is a rights issue. And I’m very much opposed to how much privacy we’ve been asked to give up.
A friend of mine’s child contacted me recently to ask how to defend warrantless wiretapping. She’s in a debate and that was the side assigned to her. She was frustrated – said she couldn’t think of any good reason. I complimented her intelligence and said this is one battle she should lose, and that I was mad at her teacher for giving her such an assignment.
We should ALL be writing our congresspeople and saying we shouldn’t have to pay this price. We shouldn’t be so willing to give up our liberty!!!
I wrote mine. The problem is if they did stop these searches and then God forbid we did get attacked all hell would break lose for any Congress critter who stepped up to stop it. So they’re all big fat chickens. What they don’t get is a 3 yo old or a cancer survivor isn’t going to blow up a plane. I mean, these are unecessary intrusions.
And of course our mighty leaders will never have to suffer at the hands of an $8 an hour TSA agent.
The only thing that will wake up Washington is if the airlines start losing money due to folks not flying so much.
We are really going down the tubes.
I signed the petition at FireDogLake here: http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/. Hope others do as well.
You’re right. The cowards are afraid. But they could get around that by simply emailing a questionnaire to their constituents arguing the pros and cons and then saying I voted the way my people wanted me to. (There’s a thought, eh?)
I think you are touching on some issues that are rather crucial. As long as the US is going to behave like an empire (with all that comes with that including the exploitation of those who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, the support of terrorist regimes, and although politically incorrect to say so the periodic acts of genocide against those we wish to colonize), there is going to be blowback. The simplest way to make our citizens safe would be to stop bombing other peoples’ countries, to stop supporting brutal dictatorships, to stop the exploitation.
Short of that, no amount of “security” will make us any safer. All these measures (whether it’s the latest outrage from TSA to the warrantless wiretapping of average residents, and other nefarious actions thanks to the Patriot Act) serve to do is to keep the public sufficiently scared in order to roll back even more liberties as the government flails about in its efforts to deal with the blowback it has caused.
A character in a Guy Fawkes mask once remarked that people shouldn’t be afraid of their government. We might be wise to remember that.
Just so you know, when Hannity says this:
why don’t we adopt the Israeli security procedures which are less intrusive
it doesn’t mean what you think it means. “adopt Israeli security procedures” is right-wing code for “keep doing all of the humiliating things we’re doing, but only to Muslims or people who vaguely look like Muslims”.
It’s not a call for saner security. It’s outrage that as a white American they’re being subjected to humiliating body searches when “everyone knows” that if they just subjected every brown person who wanted to get onto a plane to a full-body cavity search we’d never have another terrorist problem again. And that the humiliation at the airport is directly due to those damn liberals who won’t less TSA assume that everyone who looks vaguely Muslimish is a terrorist and treat them as such.
That’s what this is all about. White guys are getting harassed at airports and they’re fed up because “why am I getting harassed? I don’t look like a terrorist!“
THIS.
All day long.
While I don’t relish the thought of being felt up or having irradiated images of me (though I look good that’s still sad when you haven’t seen enough that you have score airport images of folks’ body parts) the poutrage from folks who ordinarily can’t get enough of tough security procedures make me laugh.
Not only is the President a person of color, but the government is now treating you like one? Horrors!
(((Sigh))))
Given how polluted our air, water and food supply are, just give me shot of radiation and enjoy the view!
So I’m feeling cheeky.
<rimshot>
What gets me is there is no huge outcry from well us. MAYBE when they start doing strip searches Americans might say refuse to fly and close down airlines? Maybe?
I’d like to see the Obama women, Nancy Pelosi, John Boners family, Harry Reid’s family go through this. I bet this practice would be stopped within hours. Oh wait. Never gonna happen.
Hate to say it, but the rethugs coming out all outraged and shit is a good strategy for them. Because Obama is in charge of HLS and TSA. And he refuses to stop it. Just makes him look more clueless and pathetic than usual. And that’s a good thing for the rethgs. That’s their whole reason for existing.
What happened to the War on Terror and keeping the Homeland safe?
Wasn’t that the Repub drumbeat during Bush?
Sean has his own plane. No one will be touching his junk in the near future.